


Return

by tcarroll_12



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Alec Hardy Needs A Hug, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22985566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tcarroll_12/pseuds/tcarroll_12
Summary: After 4 months of silence, a familiar face returns to Broadchurch. Short fluff :)
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 4
Kudos: 95





	Return

DI Ellie Miller, utterly exhausted, trudged back into the Broadchurch police station, shaking out her thick auburn locks with a sigh. 

“Welcome back, ma'am,” Stan at the front desk said. “Ah, you’ve had a delivery to your office. Looked pretty important.”

Ellie made herself smile at Stan despite her exhaustion. 

“Thanks, Stan.” 

He gave her a nod.

She entered the elevator, leaned back against the railing, and secured her hair once again with her rubber band. God, she was looking forward to collapsing onto her bed tonight. This case had dragged on, but they’d finally cracked it and now all that was left was paperwork. 

Not for the first time, her thoughts drifted to Hardy. To what he was doing. How he was doing. 

She would die before telling a single other officer, but she missed him. Deeply. He could be an absolute knob—was most of the time—but during their time together he’d slowly shown cracks in his stoic, asocial armor, revealing an unexpectedly caring and emotional human being. It didn’t show very often, and hardly around others, but she’d caught enough glimpses to realize there was fierce loyalty—and immense trauma—he kept securely packed beneath workaholism and emotional distance.  
That trauma, combined with his terribly warped sense of self-worth, was the reason he’d been sent down south after the whole ordeal with the Albertson-Andrews case and the CTSFO raid, to an institution specializing in law enforcement-and armed forces-based PTSD among other issues. He’d been gone for four and a half months now, and she hadn’t heard a thing from him, or even from Jenkinson, who was serving as the liaison on his case.

Surely they’d have notified her if he'd slipped through their cracks and succeeded in—

_Ellie, stop._

Upstairs now, she left the elevator, forcing herself to stand with the authority she carried as inspector 

_Hardy’s replacement_

and made it to the office without event. A few of her coworkers greeted her as she came round to the inspector's office. Ellie was at least grateful they had adapted to Hardy’s sudden absence, and her subsequent promotion, without much difficulty. Lord knew she needed the sense of normalcy. 

“Where’s DC Sharpe?” she asked, stopping just outside the office. 

“On lunch, ma'am,” Eleanor piped up cheerfully. “He should be back soon though.” 

Ellie made a face. “Fine. I’m giving him the paperwork from Rivers. Tell him to come and see me when he gets back.” With that, she opened the office door, slipped inside, and shut it behind her.

She did not see the officers smile at one another. Important delivery, indeed.

The first thing Ellie did was shut the blinds and throw her bag on the black couch. 

Then she saw him. The office chair was turned away from her, but she knew that hair. Her heart leapt into her throat. Could it really be—

The chair slowly swiveled around.

_Alec Hardy._

His face, though still somewhat gaunt, was pulled into a devious grin, fingers tented beneath his bearded chin, elbows resting on the chair arms. He raised an eyebrow, grinned wider at Miller's stunned expression, and said nonchalantly, “Miss me?”

Ellie was frozen in place in disbelief. On the outside she was simply stunned, but inside, she was screaming, crying, running around in circles—

Hardy stood up, shoved his hands into his pockets, and stood in front of Ellie, still grinning. 

“Is it really you or am I losing my mind?” was all she could whisper. Slowly, with a tremble she couldn’t hide, she reached out and put a hand on his chest, half fearing it would go right through. Hardy watched her with bemusement. 

Her hand connected with real cotton. Draped over real human skin and muscle. 

Suddenly, Hardy was wrapping his bony arms around her, burying his face in her ponytail, the swagger all but vanished from his posture. For his part, he was glad the blinds were shut; he felt a storm of hot tears threatening to burst and he’d be powerless to stop them, so bloody glad was he seeing Miller once again. He hadn’t felt normal since the morning he left on that stupid train. The first two whole months of his intensive therapy were hell in a handbasket, but after a lot of emotional unpacking, with some gentle pushing from his therapist—and the antidepressants along the way—he finally realized, and had the courage to accept, that Miller was the only thing keeping him going. Being able to come back to Broadchurch, sod if he kept his job or not. 

Back to Ellie. 

Without that hope, he didn’t know how long he would have lasted.

Still floored by Alec's sudden reappearance, Ellie slowly allowed herself to embrace her ex partner, still half afraid he would vanish into thin air and she’d be left with a Hardy-sized hole in her office.

And another in her heart.

Then she felt him swallow thickly through her hair. Realized the urgency, the _desperation_ in Hardy's grip.

Then, most alarmingly, she felt him start to quiver.

She was about to say something when he let out a half-smothered sob and lamented to her hair tie, “I missed you, Ellie.” As if that was a key to the floodgates, he clapped a hand over his face and broke down, trying to stem the rising tide of shame he’d been working to quell for the past three months. Emotions were still a difficult topic for him, but Miller was the one person in the world he was beginning to feel he could trust with his.

Ellie, for her part, was reeling.

_Hardy was back._

_He was alive._

_He’d missed her._

_And he was_ crying— _openly._  
Tearing up now herself, she tightened her grip on her friend, moving one hand up to lay lightly against the back of his head. 

“You absolute knob,” she whispered affectionately. 

“I’m sorry, Miller,” he whispered. “I’m so, so sorry…”

“The only thing I’ll accept any sort of apology for is for not bloody writing me or phoning,” she declared, finally pushing him back to get a good look at his face. “You just might have actually earned your ‘Shitface’ nickname."

Hardy grinned through his tears. “Ach, no, Miller,” he retorted.  
“I’m the worst cop in Britain.”


End file.
